[sydney-jan. 9] Cola-Cola Amatil and Telstra, Australia's major telephony company, have joined forces in a deal that could see people buying cans of Coke from pay telephones within five years. An initial marketing strategy, to be developed this year, will reward repeat pay phone customers with soft drinks and Coke vending machines users with free phone calls.

[brussels-jan. 9] Companies that use English on their products sold in France and even those using English on the Internet have come under fire from a French campaign to protect the national language. The Georgia Institute of Technology's French branch in Metz is accused of breaking local law because it publishes English language text on the Internet. A ruling is due Feb. 24

[lucerne, switzerland-jan. 7] ISL, the sports sponsorship group, has named Daniel Beauvois as managing director of the group's worldwide TV business and a member of the new group management board. Mr. Beauvois, 41, was involved in marketing communications in the computer industry in the 1980s before being named managing director of the Munich-based sports marketing agency ISPR in 1991. Under his leadership, ISPR became a leader in the European sports media business. He will now be responsible for London-based ISL TV and ISL Productions. ISL is a major sports event marketing and sponsorship group that markets on behalf of international sports federations, event marketing and media packages, TV rights and merchandising. Clients include soccer's International Federation of Football Associations and the International Olympic Committee.

[prague-jan. 4] Stratosfera, the publisher of Czech-language editions of glossy magazines Esquire and Harper's Bazaar, is to take over the licensing agreement for another Hearst title, Cosmopolitan. Cosmopolitan first appeared in the Czech Republic in 1994 and was published by New Media. Vaclav Burianek, media director of DDB, observes that "the magazine has been very badly organized regarding advertisingsales the entire time it has been in the Czech market." Cosmo, which competes with Elle here,failed to publish in December.

[warsaw-jan. 4] Universal Studios will help finance RTL7 in Poland and expand access to programming with a $37.5 million investment for 50% of the new channel. The remaining 50% is owned by the Luxembourg-based media company CLT, which launched RTL7 last month. RTL7 can be seen by nearly 60% of Poland's direct-to-home market and nearly 30% of Poland's 11.8 million TV households.